Another Ventura one from Gill's cruises. The on board spend effectively brings the price to £750pp, a good deal for the middle fortnight in May!

Med Adventure
8 May 2009 - 14nts
Ventura

£300 per cabin on board spend!

Was £1099pp
Now £899pp
For 2 days only!

Re Windjammers post about dinner suits. Marks and Spencer have a dinner jacket for £30 and the trousers to match for £19. They also have a nice dark jacket with trousers to match for the same price. This would be good for anyone who would like to 'drees up ' without doing the whole DJ thing. You could wear the suit with a white shirt and bowtie and hardly tell the difference. Luc ais this is Feel free to move and start a new thread re cruise wear if you want.

Woo hoo!

Just received an email from Smartcruiser with latest deals on NCL cruises, such as:

7 nts Majesty Oceanview from $214

That's for departing Nov 29, Dec 6 and Dec 13.

Where are the cruises to give people a clue.

Headline US prices are allways low because they don't include the extras.

What are the taxes and fuel suppliments ,

an idea of flights would be usefull(but I won't nother looking)

eg :

NCL deals from ncl.com
7-Day Bahamas & Florida Round-trip Charleston
Charleston; Great Stirrup Cay; Nassau; Grand Bahama Island; Orlando (Port Canaveral)
Prices from $229
example price 6th Dec inside or OV
Cruise £229 Tax $91.94 fuel $77 Total $397.94 or around £268.

Expect around 15% of the cruise only fares through discount agents.

Another cruise related deal.(also on http://www.holidaytruths.co.uk/viewforum.php?f=38 look for airport parking threads)

I had read about these deals but never found one for our cruises before but did this time.

Undercover hotels at airports with parking.

If you use a site like holidayextras and check enough in advance you can get a good hotel/parking deal

We got holiday inn Heathrow with 16days parking for £60.(+heathrow hopper £5pp each way no free buses)
Great for an early flights, if taking the risk of flying same day or want a longer day at the departure port.

Another hotel tip if that deal does not work is the Holiday In group have a 2-4-1 on nearly all the time.
Based on the flexible rate get the second night free, to do more than two nights you need to do multiple bookings.
http://www.ichotelsgroup.com/exclusive

I have checked these and this works even for the next weekend, great for a short break or an extra night if traveling a long way for a cruise.

This works on european hotels so worth checking for your departure port if you want some time pre or post cruise

In Auckland at the moment due to board tomorrow lunchtime. Got an email before I left for the QV 6 nights Transatlantic including scheduled flights from New Tork home for the unbelievable price of 445 Sorry can't find the sterling sign on this computer.
Yes it is January and all the time at sea but a stay in NY is advertised at 40 pounds per person for hotel stay.
This offer is for the start of the QV start of the world cruise. Me I am just looking forward to the Millennium tomorrow.

Sue

Have a wonderful time, Sue.

Has anyone found any good cruise deals for the Easter school hols- weekend starting 4th April, 2 adults and 2 children. For that time of year I guess we are looking at the carribean (Fine by me!!). I'm guessing it could come in too expensive, but if we could get it for around the £4000 mark (pushing it I know) I would be tempted. We wouldn't normally, but would consider taking the kids out of school for upto a week, if it meant we could afford to go. Never done a cruise before, so don't want to totally break the bank incase we don't like it.
Thanks for any help/advice

Pam

Hi We sailed to the canary islands last easter with Thomson Destiny. Booked up 8 days before we went and price was an impressive 380 pounds each which included our flights to Tenerife. We had never cruised before, but felt at this price we had nothing to lose and we had lovely warm weather. Good luck.

Wow, that was a bargain- hadn't thought of the Canaries, so that's something else to consider. I have to book my A/L about 3 months in advance, so I suspect what I will do is book the fortnight off and cancel if we don't find anything suitable

Thanks

Pam

Mostly everyone we spoke to on the ship had booked a late deal and hadn't paid much more than us, so I think this is the way to go. We will probably do another one and book last minute - Trish

Thanks Trish- was that completely in the school holidays, as I may have trouble extending my holiday outside of that fortnight at short notice?
Also I'm very confused, have looked at Gill's website and some of the cruises it says fly uk/ miami for example and then goes onto list the stopovers, but what I'm not sure about is if it includes your flight out there. If it does then the prices aren't as steep as I thought they might be, however to add flights on top would make it unrealistic.
Have to say I do really fancy it- best of both worlds lots to see and do but with the R+R inbetween stops. Are there any cruise lines to avoid with the kids who will be 10 and 12.

Thanks for all the help- I can feel my enthusiasm building, good considering I haven't been able to muster any for next year as yet. We waited all year expecting my husband to be made redundant but not wanting to jump ship just incase it didn't happen (excuse the pun!!) it did, but the star that he is, he was only out of work for two weeks, which as he is a surveyor is amazing. So anyway, we can now look ahead again!!

Pam

Hi Pam - Yes this was completely in the school holidays. We sailed on the Friday at the end of the 1st week and returned the following Friday. I have to take school holidays even although my ' youngsters' are 20 and 22 now as I work in a school. Our flights were from Stansted which was superb as I am in Suffolk and only 40 minutes from there. There were children on the Destiny and I was surprised at how many younger couples were on board as my impression was that it would be mostly older passengers (our dinner companions were older, but great fun) I gather it isn't the stuffy affair that cruising used to be and children are tolerated very well. Glad your husband found a new job as it must be very worrying.

Oops forgot to say that we booked through cruisedeals.co.uk and these were mostly all with flights included. I would worry that something went wrong with my flight if I booked my own even although I always book our hotel holidays and flight separately. Just a bit different missing a cruise sailing.

Check out RCI Brillance and NCL Jade for the Med over Easter

I know one family got a deal on the Jade in a suite for the 10th
http://www.ncl.com/nclweb/booking/cruisedetails.html?packageId=1621217

does depend on your school hols dates

Easter does throw up the odd late deal if you can be a flexable a lot of families with kids going into exams are not all happy about going on holiday over easter.

Hi Windjammer Is the weather any good in the med for easter or is it still a bit early in the season for sunbathing.

Thanks everyone for the info. I like the cruise deals website, it's clearly laid out and I can see the flights on that which has stopped my confusion!! Pricing directly with Thomson, I could get a Canaries deal for just under £4000, but I think I will sit and watch and wait as there are loads of holidays out there with other cruiselines. If anyone spots anything great though I'm all ears

Pam

If you are interested in Thomson cruises, do not book online with Thomson. Go through their direct sell arm, Portland. You can't do it online, you have to phone. They will knock about £100 per person off the online price.

P&O Ventura is available at excellent prices for 15 night Caribbean sailing on 5th or 6th December. Price for a month or so now has been £879 to £899 for inside, including London flights. Now available from LGW or BHX at £799 showing on teletext P228...you will need to go through the pages to find the operator offering that price, as most are still showing the higher price.

Also Gill's cruises are offering a Junior Mini-Suite on the same sailing at £1099

Could be interesting once we get into Jan/Feb to see if the Ventura cruise prices come down to similar lows! We sailed on Ventura on Med in October and, whilst we have sailed on better lines, this is phenomenal value for the Caribbean and the itinery is excellent.